Mobile devices, such as smartphones, tablet computers, and other similar computing devices, are increasingly being used for capturing and processing data. Typically, a mobile device includes a high quality camera that can be used to capture images of printed documents. For example, a customer may be asked to print and fill out a form, and send a digital copy of the completed form to a specific vendor. The user may opt to capture an image of the form with their mobile device. Software installed on the device may then further process the captured image. For example, the software may be configured to enhance, recognize, store and share the images of printed documents. Continuing the above example, the user may store the captured image of the form and transmit the image to the vendor.
The mobile device used to capture the image of the printed document may be limited by software and hardware components within the device. For example, the mobile device's camera may contain a camera lens that has a focal length that prevents the lens from accurately focusing on an object a short distance away. When such a limitation exists, a user holding the device too closely to the printed document may not be able to properly focus upon the printed document.
Similarly, if the mobile device is not in a parallel plane to the printed document being captured, the image may be distorted, resulting in a low quality image. This perspective distortion can adversely affect optical character recognition (OCR) and other recognition algorithms. Perspective distortion correction can be applied after capture; however, the resolution that is inherently lost as a result of the distortion can never be recovered perfectly via digital processing after the image is captured.